


as he pulls the waves upon the ocean

by Island_of_Reil



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Academia, Beard Burn, Blackmailed / Coerced Into Sex, Bleeding due to rough sex, Caught having Sex, Classism, Clergy, Compliance Due To Fear Of Being Outed, Crying, Dignified Character is Broken by Rape, Face Slapping, Face-Fucking, Forced Kissing, Forced Orgasm, Hair-pulling, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Bestiality, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Flogging, Love Bites, M/M, Multiple Relationships, Prayer, Pre-Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scratching, Spit As Lube, Unwilling Arousal, Verbal Humiliation, Victim Is Bent Over Desk/Table/etc, Victim Offers Self To Protect Others, Victim Resigned to Rape, Victim's POV, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 14:51:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: The cruelty of an elder cleric, and the compassion of a cold god.





	as he pulls the waves upon the ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vulnerasti_Cor_Meum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulnerasti_Cor_Meum/gifts).



> Happy Nonconathon, vulnerasti_cor_meum. I hope you like this fic.
> 
> Many thanks to [Zhisanin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zhisanin) for looking this over for me.

“Ceradet,” Thara whispered. His voice broke into a moan as Ceradet, who had Thara’s shirt unbuttoned and flung open, sank lower and lower on his knees to nip his way down the right side of Thara’s body. Fire burst in Thara’s loins with each tiny flare of pain along his skin. When Ceradet reached Thara’s hips he made short work of the buttons, pushed trousers and underwear down as one, and swallowed Thara’s rigid cockstand in one smooth motion. Thara pressed a hand to his mouth but couldn’t quite stifle a quiet whine.

_“Who’s there?”_

He’d never gone from fire to ice so fast. Ceradet pulled off Thara’s rapidly shrinking cock with a choked sound and scrambled to his feet, while Thara yanked up his trousers and rebuttoned his shirt with clumsy hands. Since when did that layabout of a night watchman ever look in on this decrepit little out-of-the-way courtyard, especially so late at night?

Each of them threw an arm over his eyes as the light of the lantern fell upon them. Thus Thara did not at first see who spoke: “Well. What an exceedingly interesting spectacle this is.”

He did not need to. It was the dry, acerbic voice of a man in his early forties, richly modulated by long tenure in both academe and clergy. The Honorable Adru Metonar, Rector, Seminary of Ulis at Ashedro.

“Sir,” Thara blurted, even hoarser than normal, trying to put his hair to rights and managing no more than a loop and knot of ribbon. He hadn’t felt the chill of the early-autumn night as Ceradet was making love to him, but now he was gooseflesh all over, and grabbing up his fallen jacket and struggling back into it helped not at all. This was his ruin, he was sure of it. He’d be expelled from seminary in disgrace, nowhere to go but back to his father’s house. If his father would have him. How much more would his father despise him, knowing him to be marnis for sure?

Metonar ignored him for the moment. “Thou. Art the baker’s boy, yes?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Ceradet gulped. He was frozen in place, ears fallen, whites of his eyes shining in the kerosene flame. Thara yearned to throw his arms around his lover again. He did not move.

“Do thy parents know that debauchest chaste young men sworn unto the gods in thy spare time? Knowest that is a flogging offense, dost not?”

The image of Ceradet’s father, and the stave he kept at the back of the bakery, flashed before Thara’s eyes. _“No,”_ he said heatedly. “Sir. He didn’t —”

Metonar pinned him with a hawk’s glare. “Did we ask for thy contribution, Celehar?”

Thara shrank back against the pitted stone wall. “Our apologies, sir,” he whispered.

Metonar turned his attention back to Ceradet. “Thou wilt come with ourself and Celehar.”

Panic, already having welled up like floodwater in Thara, closed over him almost entirely. “Sir, please! This is all our fault! We’ll take all the punishment for it!”

Metonar’s gaze bored through him again, but Thara did not avert his own nor lower his head. The three of them stood motionless in the flickering light for long seconds, the hammering of Thara’s heart almost painful in its intensity, before Metonar said neutrally, “We will consider thine offer. Come along, the both of you.”

They followed him out of the little courtyard, across a larger one, and into the stoa of one of the academic buildings. Thara’s and Metonar’s well-polished, hard-soled black shoes clicked sharply against the marble walkway, Ceradet’s worn boots echoing them more softly, as they passed endless columns carved with lunar iconography. Toward the end of the stoa, Metonar turned and began to descend a stairwell, looking over his shoulder to make sure both young men still followed him.

Thara’s heart plummeted further. Below stairs in this building were only two things: seemingly endless storerooms, and half a dozen disciplinary cells. He would have wagered a great deal that Metonar was not leading them to the former. His stomach turned over with unwanted validation as they passed the storerooms and the lantern illuminated the first grid of heavy iron bars.

The cells were all empty, their gates shut and a key protruding from each lock. Metonar hung the lantern from a hook mounted between the first and second cells on the right side of the corridor. He removed the key from the first cell on the left and pocketed it, then dragged open the gate. He was slender and not especially tall, and it cost him effort, though not as much as Thara would have imagined. “Into the cell, boy,” he said curtly, eyes on Ceradet again. Ceradet seemed about to vomit in fear as he obeyed. Inside was a cot, a chamberpot, and — Thara was relieved to see — a stoppered water jug shining with condensation and a cup beside it. Nothing else. At least it wasn’t filthy, thank the gods, only dank.

The gate screamed back into place, its thud resounding in Thara’s gut like a revethahal. As Metonar turned the key in the lock, he met Ceradet’s stricken gaze and said, “We will deal with thee once we have dealt with thine adoring friend. Mightst as well get what rest thou canst in the meantime.”

There was no apparent cruel intent in those words, just pragmatic advice, but in the darkness behind Metonar Thara’s lips drew back over his teeth. He was swift to pull the mask of obedience down over his features when Metonar, lantern in hand again, turned to him and said, “Follow us, Celehar.” Thara nodded, exchanged an anxious look with Ceradet once Metonar’s back was to him again, and obeyed.

Their procession this time was longer: back upstairs to ground level, across the expanse of the main courtyard, and into the vastness of the primary academic building. The night gaslights glowed low and sallow; Metonar snuffed the lantern and left it on a shelf in the vestibule. They climbed to the second level, which like the first was mostly lecture halls; then to the third, where the Elders and preceptors had their offices. In the desolation of the hour, the soles of their shoes rang deafeningly on the stone steps and off the walls of the stairwell.

The doors on either side of the third-floor corridor stood more and more widely apart the further they walked. Metonar stopped at the third-to-last one, which was adorned with the plaque HON. A. METONAR, and produced another key. Unlike the gate of Ceradet’s cell, Metonar’s door swung open silently on well-oiled hinges.

“Thou first, Celehar.” 

Uneasily, Thara entered the darkened room. Behind him he heard the flick of a switch. Gaslights sputtered on, warmer and more plentiful than those burning in the stairwells and hallways at this hour. Two locks snicked into place as he looked about. Most preceptors’ offices were barely larger than a linen closet. As rector, Metonar had been granted one that might have comfortably seated a dozen, had there been sufficient chairs. The furnishings and bookcases were of sleek walnut, and Metonar’s desk chair was a throne of well-buffed, buttoned black leather. Small brass devotional figurines weighed down the stacks of papers and parchments on the desk. Not a speck of dust hung in the air, not an edge of paper stood out of alignment, not a single book bulged out of place. 

Metonar pulled out the desk chair and seated himself, back straight, shoulders squared, fingers steepled before him. He did not invite Thara to take one of the two simple wooden chairs before the desk. Thara, who had not expected such an invitation, did not even glance a second time at the chairs. He stood as straight as Metonar sat, forcing himself not to clasp his hands together, and held his superior’s gaze respectfully.

The rector was not an ill-favored man, though his sort of angular, trim-bearded handsomeness — common among the men of the Metonada and of several other minor noble houses in southern Thu-Athamar — was not one Thara much fancied. His black broadcloth jacket with its pewter buttons and his white linen shirt were both several cuts above the quality that novices wore, and both were as immaculate as his office. Though the shirt collar was buttoned tightly, just above it glinted a thin silver chain, far more refined than the simple black ribbon from which most scholars’ keys were suspended. The nails of his long and slender fingers were neither lacquered nor court-long, as neither was deemed appropriate in a cleric of any rank, but they were not servant-short, either, and they were buffed quite sharp. From his right forefinger, the frosty moonstone of his silver Elder’s ring sparkled in the gaslight.

“Understandest,” Metonar said, “that what we caught you at, thou and thy lover, is a grave offense against Ulis and against the novitiate vows thou hast taken.” 

Thara swallowed. “We understand, sir.” Metonar arched a narrow brow at him. Remembering something he’d heard said — _the rector demands humility from penitent novices_ — he amended his words: “ _I_ understand, sir.” 

Metonar seemed pleased with the altered manner of address in a way that struck Thara as … somehow not meet. But any thought of analyzing this perception flew from his mind as the rector continued: “And that couldst be expelled from the seminary in disgrace at our word. No prelate will sanctify a marnis, even were he to remain a junior canon for life.” 

Tears pricked at Thara’s eyes. But he thought, _I will not weep,_ and weep he did not. It was one of the very few benefits, by his reckoning, that he had reaped from his upbringing in the stifling, shallow cage of nobility. He’d no idea what he would do if Metonar made good on that threat. But he would survive. Somehow. 

He waited quietly for Metonar to continue. The rector looked vaguely displeased. _Does he wish me to beg for mercy?_ Thara supposed he should. What was a spot of groveling now, against the wrack of his future? But something in him balked at it. As hypocritical and cold as he found the concept of seemliness as nobles deemed it, he could not convince himself that to beg for grace was anything but _un_ seemly. Indeed, if he were misjudging Metonar’s reaction, his pleas might earn the man’s contempt instead of his clemency. 

Metonar finally said, “As for thy lover…” 

Thara let neither his ears flag nor his expression change. But, he thought, he must have paled visibly, for the sly, feline look of pleasure settled back over the rector’s features. “…as we said earlier, debauching one sworn unto the gods earns one a public flogging, and an especially severe one in the case of marneise debauchery.” 

It were as if a cold and powerful hand were crushing Thara’s insides from throat to belly. An ordinary public flogging could lay a penitent out for days. The condemned were hanged if common, beheaded if noble, but then there were those poor wretches whose crimes were marginally less grievous or who drew the short straw of a bloody-minded whipman, and it was not unheard of for the lash to maim them for life. Would Ceradet’s father care for him, or let his mother and sisters care for him, were he so injured? Would anyone? Thara would, without hesitation… but what with, were he cast out into the world with neither profession nor the shelter of his house? 

He tried to swallow again and found his throat too dry. He managed to croak out the words: “As I said before, I will take whatever punishment you see fit to bestow upon me, Rector. But, I beg of you, do not harm Ceradet.” Praying that the act of self-sacrifice would earn him Ulis’s forgiveness for blatantly lying to one sanctified unto the god, he continued, “He is an innocent. I beguiled him into our shameful conduct. He would never have known about that courtyard an I did not lead him there.” 

There was a pause. Metonar’s eyes were a very dark blue, almost black, but now they seemed to glow curiously in the gaslight. Very softly, with delicate enunciation, he asked, “What wilt offer up unto us, Celehar, that we will not harm thy beloved?” 

Comprehension struck Thara, sudden and merciless. Dinner had been hours ago but he could have vomited copiously on the polished wooden floor. He knew to the half-copper just how deeply his next word might indebt him, and his father’s rages had never terrified him as his imagination terrified him now. But he held Metonar’s gaze again, set his ears, and said adamantly: “Anything.” 

Seconds went by. Metonar feigned taking his time in consideration. “Anything,” he repeated slowly. “And if we spare both thyself and him? Would this make thee even more … pliant?” 

Thara’s stomach lurched again. He filled his lungs, but found himself no longer able to steadily hold that predatory gaze. His eyes flicked back and forth between the rector and the floor before he said softly, “It would, sir.” 

Metonar rose from his chair, triumphant, a hawk spreading its wings to swoop. “Then thou wilt start by undressing for us, Celehar. Entirely, until there is not a stitch left upon thee. Show thine honorable better the charms wert saving for the lowly whelp of a baker.” 

Thara had thought he had learned hate at his father’s hands, smooth as satin and hard as iron. The taste filling the back of his throat as his jacket and shirt buttons came undone for a second time that night told him he had known nothing of hate. He let it scald through his veins, through the smallest capillaries, though he was careful to keep it from his face and ears. He could feel either hate or fear now, and if he let himself feel fear he had no idea how he would be able to tolerate even Metonar’s eyes on his bare flesh. 

He would have let both jacket and shirt drop to the floor but Metonar snapped: “Fold them neatly and drape them over the chair. This is not thy dormitory chamber.” Thara seethed inwardly but denied Metonar any outward reaction as he did what he was told. Quietly, he knelt to unlace his fine shoes, tuck his wool stockings into them, and set them on the floor next to the chair. He straightened, then, and began to work at the buttons of his trousers. When his fingers trembled, and Metonar’s eyes glowed again, the fresh jolt of hatred coursing through his blood lent his hands a surprising steadiness. He slid trousers and linens down his thighs, stepped out of them, turned — knowing that Metonar must be eyeing his arse — and laid them over his shirt and jacket upon the chairback. 

Then he turned back to face the rector. Outranked, blackmailed, naked, about to be made a plaything of, all ties to his house severed by his own hand. What had he left as a weapon? His breeding. _Bear up. Weep not. Say naught unless thou must. Hast survived much, wilt survive this._ He locked his own eyes onto those coldly euphoric ones and stood in silence, awaiting Metonar’s next move. 

“We did say ‘not a stitch,’ Celehar. Why hast left thy hair bound back? We wish to see it in all its glory.” 

Of course. He should have anticipated it. He told himself it mattered not; that it was barely bound as is, that one clumsy loop after Metonar had surprised him and Ceradet. He reached up, silently cursed his hands to find them shaking again, blinked back more tears as the ribbon came away from his head with several long fine hairs attached, and let it drift down over the mound of his clothes. 

Metonar’s silence was longer this time. His eyes raked up and down Thara’s body, and Thara fought the sensation that they left welts in their wake. At last there came the assessment, in tones of faux thoughtfulness: “Bony as a horse bound for the knackers’. But that girlishly pretty face of thine, not to mention thy lovely arse, will more than compensate.” 

The rector moved unhurriedly around to the front of his desk toward Thara. His gaze was nakedly hungry now, and it took Thara effort not to recoil from it. But it would be far worse to lower his eyes and catch any distention at the front of Metonar’s trousers. Thus he was not caught unawares by the rector’s right arm going back in unison with his ears, just as he’d seen his father’s do countless times. Even as the back of Metonar’s hand spun his head around, he forced his body to stone stillness. 

The pitch and volume of Metonar’s voice dropped into an abyss of menace. “Thou wilt _not_ look us in the eye unless and until bidden. Art an unsanctified novice and a filthy marnis, and wilt keep thy gaze low as befits thee.” 

“Sir,” Thara said quietly, looking at the floor again. His left cheek burned, but he had long since taught himself not to put his hand to where he’d been struck. He wondered if Metonar would prefer he did, but with his eyes on the floor he had no way to guess. 

The next fall of Metonar’s hand therefore did take him by surprise: the trail of sharp fingernails across his left shoulder and down that side of his torso. He didn’t register the soft huff of breath as amusement until Metonar said, “Didst ask him to mark thee so? We must admit, it looks very pretty on thee.” 

Startled, Thara raised his head to glance at the narrow hand lying possessively over his starkly defined ribs — and the love-bites that ran down the other side of his body, purple and lurid, collarbone to hip. He remembered Ceradet in the courtyard, before everything went wrong, and the great cold hand was suddenly crushing his heart. 

“Thy lover must be part Nazhcreis,” Metonar mused. “Odd, we’ve never seen any fangs on the baker or his wife. A changeling, perhaps?” 

Thara resumed his downward gaze. The baiting question, he imagined, required no serious answer. Then he suppressed a flinch as Metonar scored one bite with his fingernail. “We don’t suppose wouldst like to strip to the waist before a tribunal, show the adjudicators this evidence.” 

Again, Thara did not answer — then uttered a choked cry as the sharp fingertips dug into the flesh of his right ear. “We asked thee a question, Celehar,” Metonar said mildly. 

“N-no, sir,” he gasped. Metonar released his ear, which throbbed and tingled. _Does it bleed?_ Thara didn’t dare check. 

“Then shouldst be immensely grateful for our mercy. Thy livelihood, thy good reputation, the life and limb of thy lover…. all preserved at such little cost. For thy favors seem not at all difficult to obtain.” 

Metonar dug his nails into the side of Thara’s jaw and wrenched his head upward. Thara fought down a flare of panic and cast his eyes far off to the side. “No, look at us now,” Metonar ordered. Thara obeyed, and had the dizzying sensation of peering down over the edge of a towering cliff. He swallowed hard as Metonar went on: “It’s said thou’rt a novice of great promise, Celehar, of keen intellect and earnest piety, as well as a gifted Witness. We do not presume to question where Ulis chooses to bestow his gifts, but we have seen no evidence of the rest in thy time at seminary. Thus we are led to wonder whether hast traded thine enticing arse for such commendations.” With his free hand Metonar idly fondled Thara’s right buttock, then the left, taking no great care with his nails. 

“I have not,” Thara said, and he could not help a trace of honest shock coming through the words. Naïve of him at this point, he knew. 

“No? Perhaps, then, it was merely that some of thine other preceptors let their yearnings for a pretty, delicate catamite becloud their appraisement of thine abilities.” 

Gossip that Thara had used his noble birth to bolster his clerical career had come back to him once or twice, but he’d always disregarded it: those so unduly concerned could ask about and learn the open secret of his estrangement from his house. Nor had he ever questioned his calling — Ulis had pulled Thara to him, in the words of the ancient canticle, “as he pulls the waves upon the ocean” — and never once had he stinted in his academic or other efforts at seminary. 

Yet Metonar’s barb stung in his breast like Metonar’s nails in his ear and jaw. _It’s not true. It was never true. He knows it not to be true. Why can I not convince myself of it, now?_

“All too understandable, we think, though it of course reflects poorly upon them.” Metonar released Thara’s jaw, and with relief Thara resumed his study of the floor. “Hast serviced many sons of tradesmen, Celehar? Or servants? Did thy father cast thee out after finding thee in the arms of a bootblack, perhaps?” 

The words _I cast myself out, sir_ strained to leap from Thara’s tongue. Why did he care what this wretch, this beast in cleric’s garb who claimed to despise marnei but did not cavil to use them for his own gratification, thought of him? “No, sir,” he said, and keeping his voice mild cost him effort. 

“Wert discovered in the stables, then, with one prick up thine arse and another down thy throat? Were they even the pricks of men, Celehar? Or art so eager to be made a woman of that wouldst take the pizzle of a horse, too?” 

Now he was desperately thankful he’d been ordered to avert his gaze unless otherwise bidden. Staring down the dark well of Metonar’s eyes had been repellent enough before that particular clump of filth came bubbling up. Of a certainty, men might _joke_ about such things, even some novices did, but … Metonar had sounded _excited_. A shudder ran through Thara. 

Metonar laughed, and Thara’s stomach heaved again at the corrosive sound. “Such delicate sensibilities for the spunk-toy of a baker’s son. Or perhaps shudder’st in arousal, instead, at the notion of being filled until feel’st thou mightst explode?” 

The _no, sir_ had barely formed in Thara’s mouth when it was displaced by his shocked cry. Metonar’s hand was around his cock, squeezing it hard, one wickedly sharp nail flicking against the cleft under the head. And to Thara’s horror it began to fill once again with blood. 

“We see,” Metonar said. His voice had grown husky and soft; it made Thara picture something foul and spongy lying in a gutter. “We apologize; obviously we should have begun the fond caresses a bit sooner.” He squeezed again, even harder this time, and Thara made a strangled noise in his throat. It hurt, but nowhere near enough to soften him. He’d been fully hard when Ceradet had taken him into his mouth, and now his stones ached dully with arousal suppressed and revived. 

Then his chin was being lifted again, and Thara girded himself to stare once more into the pits of Metonar’s eyes. Instead Metonar’s face veered toward his own, eyes closed, thin lips parted. His other hand continued to work energetically up and down the length of Thara’s cock, which had already reached full erection again. Bile rose in the back of Thara’s throat, and his chest grew so tight he could barely breathe. But there was naught to do but close his own eyes, open his mouth, and let the rector use it as he would. 

He nearly choked on the thick slug of Metonar’s tongue, the vindictive plunge of it within Thara’s mouth, the reek of a tooth going bad lurking beneath the tastes of pipe tobacco and — he hated himself for recognizing it — costly Anverneise wine. The rector pressed the kiss even harder upon Thara, his beard scouring Thara’s smooth cheeks and chin. After long seconds he pulled back, his lips wet and curled into a rictus. “Smack’st of gall, Celehar,” he declared. “Perhaps we should offer to change that for thee?” 

This, Thara had surmised to be inevitable from the moment he had promised Metonar anything he wanted. It would not be pleasant, but if he could bring Metonar off in his mouth, he could spare himself from even less-pleasant …. activities. Hoping to get it over with quickly, he immediately sank to one knee and began to unfasten the rector’s trousers. 

The cock that jutted out at him was, thank all the gods, on the slender side and not especially long. He engulfed it with as little preamble as he had knelt with. Judging by how strongly it throbbed against his palate and how sharply Metonar sucked in his breath, he had chosen the correct course of action. As for the flavor of sweat and musk with a faint undertaste of piss… _hast tasted worse, and of thine own free will. More than just tasted, in sooth._ The two years of meditation lessons now behind him were more than adequate to help Thara ignore the taste and smell, force the muscles of his throat to relax, focus on his breath passing steadily in and out of his nostrils — 

— until he couldn’t breathe at all, or even cry out at the fist knotted in his hair, because Metonar had thrust all the way down his throat. Metonar withdrew, the reprieve barely long enough for Thara to inhale, before he plunged again and Thara’s nose was once more pushed tight up against the rector’s pubis. Breeding was no match for the will to survive: he flailed, shoving Metonar back toward his desk, yanking his own head sideways. When his mouth was once again empty he coughed and wheezed, blind with tears from the assault on his throat and what felt like an entire clump of hair having been ripped from his head. 

Through the ringing in his ears he heard, “We are gravely disappointed, Celehar. We imagined thee to be an accomplished cocksucker as well as an enthusiastic one. This does not at all aid thy case that thou wert the one to corrupt thy lover and not the other way around. Ah, well, certainly hast more to offer us than thy mouth.” 

Then Metonar’s fingers were in his hair again, hauling him to his feet. Thara, who had barely stopped coughing and gulping air, howled in pain — then screamed hoarsely as Metonar threw him face-down onto the desk, on top of the paperwork and two of the brass figurines. They toppled but, trapped under Thara’s weight, dug viciously into his collarbone and the soft space just under his breastbone. He squirmed. 

Metonar’s voice was thick and hushed with lust. “We must say, as enchanting as thy face is, it is as nothing compared with the absolute vision of thine arse jutting into the air and wriggling. We find it difficult to credence thy claim that no preceptor has ever put it to use, but an that be the case, we are more than delighted to be the first.” 

Thara’s ears were already as far back as they would go, but they seemed to pull in yet another inch and his eyes widened as he heard Metonar hawk back and spit as crudely as any drunkard outside a bar. Then several sharp fingernails were pressing into the cleft of his arse to hold his buttocks apart and two _more_ sharp fingernails were sliding into him at once. He yelped at the feel of the Elder’s ring scraping his inner membranes — and cursed himself silently. His own cockstand had died away when Metonar’s had begun to choke him, but now the sheer physical stimulation of ungentle fingers in and out of his hole was restoring it yet again, making it throb in painful tandem with his stones. 

“Mmm, art quite tight,” Metonar all but purred. “Not at all the elephaunt’s foreskin we anticipated having to fuck. Though wilt be considerably looser when we’re done with thee.” He whisked his fingers out, the nails catching in sensitive inner flesh on their way out. Then, with a sickening sense of inevitability, Thara felt something hot and blunt and solid prodding his hole. 

He bit his lip. Every instinct that was not screaming at him to flee was urging him to tense, to contract. With all the remaining will he possessed he forced his inner muscles to push outward. Metonar, he expected, would plunge into his arse as he had his throat, fast and rough and tearing as he drove in and out. The only recourse was to save himself as much additional pain and blood as he could. 

Metonar did not hurry at all. To be sure, he was not gentle, and his saliva did not ease the way nearly enough: the length of him burned and stung and made Thara bite his lip harder to stifle his whimpers. But for long, hideous moments, drawn out and warped like one’s reflection in a carnival-glass, he sank slowly and inexorably into Thara’s body, his nails leaving stinging half-moons and his ring impressing itself upon Thara’s hips. _He wishes to savor it,_ Thara thought despairingly. 

The moment that Metonar was fully hilted within him did not creep up on Thara; it gloated at him from afar as it approached, until it overtook him. Warm broadcloth pressed against him from shoulder blades to thighs, Metonar’s narrow chest heaving within it against his back. He could feel the cool buttons of Metonar’s jacket leaving indentations along his spine, the damned ( _please forgive me, Ulis_ ) figurines grinding into his shoulder and midriff, the abrasion of his insides, and — more horrible than all the rest — his own cock fully hardened again from how Metonar’s dragged against the knot of nerves inside him. 

And then, no, it was _not_ more horrible than all the rest, for Metonar’s lips were against the nape of his neck. A soft, soft kiss, the most tender of a lover’s affections, Thara feeling not a single beard-hair rasp against him. Then the precise, deliberate setting of teeth into his skin. Thara’s cock pulsed painfully between his belly and the desk, and he whined like a beaten pup. 

“Art so very beautiful, Thara,” Metonar whispered, lifting his head that his lips were at the edge of Thara’s left ear. “And so very, very delicious.” 

_I will not weep. I cannot weep. Emperor of the Night Sky, do not let me weep._

He let the mantra fill his mind, soothe the space behind his eyes that had prickled at the obscenity of his given name on Metonar’s tongue. And he did not weep, not at the sting of teeth and scrape of beard upon his ear, nor at the fingernails that scored him and the metal that bruised him, nor even at how his cock leaked wet and sticky onto the paperwork beneath him as Metonar thrust again and again. He would wipe his own seed and Metonar’s seed from his body and put on his clothes and walk out of Metonar’s office dry-eyed. He would shepherd Ceradet out of his cell and comfort him without a hint of how he had purchased Ceradet’s freedom. He would enter the ulimeire in this empty hour and throw himself down before the icon and let Ulis’s icy gaze freeze away the filth inside him. He would find a cask of metheglin and drown himself in it for days. 

He caught himself silently echoing the mantra faster and faster — _Iwillnotweep Icannotweep Emperorofthenightskydonotletmeweep_ — forced himself back within it, found it getting away from him again. It was not until the third time he had to reset the tempo that he realized he was thinking it in time with Metonar’s ever more rapid thrusts. 

Metonar chose the same moment to release Thara’s right hip, the scant flesh there still sore from the dig of his nails and his ring. His right hand wormed beneath Thara’s body and wrapped around Thara’s cock, its grip warm and its pace merciless. “Spend for us, our pretty little catamite,” Metonar breathed against his ear. “Show us thy gratitude for our using thee so well.” 

It tore a long and wavering cry from Thara’s throat, desperation fused with anger and disgust, just as it tore his climax out of him. More soft, scornful laughter at the edge of his ear, fading into erratic hitches of breath, as Metonar’s hand filled with copious, splattering seed. Stickiness at Thara’s right hip as that hand seized onto it again. Short, rabbity thrusts that hurt all the worse in the absence of any pleasure, no matter how unwanted. A grunt, another grunt, a groan, a tightening of Metonar’s grip. The cock within Thara spasming. Heavy, warm stickiness dribbling out of his arse and down his inner thighs. Then a hideous quiet, broken only by Metonar’s panting before it died away to silence. 

Thara closed his eyes tightly against the ache behind them. _It is over. Art alive and … probably … whole. And wilt spend the next two days insensate. Canst think on this when art sober again._

The weight was lifted off Thara’s back; the air of the office was unpleasantly chill on his sweaty, sticky skin. And then Metonar uttered another knowing laugh. “Our word, Celehar.” A sharp fingernail trailed viscous fluid across the crease of Thara’s left thigh. “Art bleeding like a bride. What a consummate liar thou art, pretending it was thou who corrupted the baker’s get and not the other way around. And there’s another thing for which oughtst to be grateful to us for: that we were the one to take thy maidenhead. There’ll be fewer bad habits we’ll have to train out of thee.” 

Thara’s eyes shot open, eyelashes brushing drily against a piece of paper. “Bad… habits, sir?” he croaked. His throat ached almost as much as his insides did. 

Metonar cupped and squeezed Thara’s right buttock. “Taught to thee by the baker’s get, or any other man. Oh, didst think tonight would fulfill thine end of the bargain entirely? We did not keep an eye on thee and thy lover for weeks and follow you both to that courtyard in the hopes of just one night’s diversion. And as we said, art absolutely delicious, leaving us decidedly _not_ satisfied with this little liaison ending here and now. Tomorrow we head to Cetho on Ulis’s business but will return in four days, whereupon we will send for thee at a slightly earlier hour of the clock. Wilt return here to satisfy us in any manner we command. And wilt do so at least twice a week for the remainder of thy novitiate.” 

The words did not make sense right away, not through the soft, warm cloud of disbelief that had curled around Thara’s mind. Then the cloud began to disintegrate, Metonar’s meaning creeping in through the tatters. 

As the last of it broke, so did Thara. 

He did not recognize the loud, long noise that issued from his own throat, a sound he had only ever heard from a dying animal, but punctuated with wild, gasping sobs. Snot as well as tears fountained from him. An unworthy voice at the back of his mind offered its hopes that he was ruining yet another piece of paperwork and that Metonar had valued both documents highly. 

“Pathetic,” Metonar said with contempt. “Get thy caterwauling marnis carcass off our desk.” He grabbed Thara by the hair again and hauled him bodily upward. Thara, still gasping and sobbing, stumbled into one of the chairs and knocked it over; he could barely keep himself from falling to the floor. Walking was …uncomfortable. So was breathing, for that matter, between his thoroughly abused throat and the throbbing bruise beginning to appear beneath his ribcage. 

“Put our chair back to rights. And cleanse thyself, thou wretched little spunk-rag.” Something soft struck him in the small of his back. “Dost wish thy darling baker’s boy to see or smell it on thee? Not that it matters overmuch, as wilt no longer be dallying with him. Bad habits, once again. And we are a jealous lover.” 

_All to the good,_ Thara thought numbly as he stooped to retrieve the crumpled handkerchief. The position made his insides burn anew. _I cannot endanger thee any longer, Ceradet._ His sobs quieting, he attended to his face, then his body, with the square of fine silk. His own seed and Metonar’s had begun to dry on his skin, but not so much that he could not wipe most of it away. 

“Put it on the desk,” Metonar snapped. “Atop one of the papers thou hast spoilt. We’ll have to have it recopied, damn thee.” The unworthy inner voice crowed its gratification; Thara disregarded it as he obeyed Metonar. “Good. Now get dressed again and stop sniveling; it quite ruins thine appearance.” 

The hatred of earlier had ebbed away as Thara had gasped for breath, and had been held at bay by pain, shame, and despair. Now it flooded him again, like a glass of metheglin or a draught of poppy-juice, and his veins sang with it. It turned his heart to a massif of ice, his limbs to the untrembling arms of a clockwork, as he drew on his clothes and shoes. Remembering Metonar’s order, he let his still-damp eyes bore a hole in the floor rather than through the rector’s head as, taking his time, he rebraided his queue. _Thou didst include the ribbon in “every stitch,” didst not?_

He could feel Metonar’s hard glare on him again, but the rector did not hurry him along. He waited until Thara stood fully dressed and at attention once more, then said in the plural, “Let us go.” 

Thara did not realize until they were back in the corridor, Metonar relocking his door from the outside, how rank the office had become with seed and sweat. When they exited the building, the rekindled lantern in Metonar’s hand, the night air was another intoxicant in Thara’s blood. He gulped great lungfuls of it, imagined it a balm against every soreness Metonar had inflicted upon him, as under Ulis’s baleful eye he followed the rector rather more slowly now across the great courtyard and to the other academic building. Its cellar was close and confined, but it smelled of nothing less chaste than chill humidity and a bit of dust. 

When they reached Ceradet’s cell, he was seated on the edge of the cot, watching them intently. His close-cropped hair was amuss. Thara hoped he’d been able to sleep at least a little in the interim. 

Metonar unlocked the gate and hauled it open once more. As the screech died away and Ceradet got to his feet, the rector said brusquely, “Mayest leave. Do not ever return to the seminary grounds unless art delivering bread to the kitchens, in which case art to depart again immediately once thy business here is completed. And art never to see Celehar again, not even to speak to him. If we learn otherwise, we will arrange for thee to be dealt forty lashes in Ashedro town square, doused in brine, and left bound to the post for a night and a day regardless of the weather. Have we made ourself clear?” 

Ceradet had appeared to be on the verge of fainting with relief with Metonar’s first words, but with the order to never speak to Thara again his eyes shot wide and his mouth opened. The ensuing threat left his lower lip trembling. 

“Answer us, boy. Have we made ourself clear?” 

“Y-yes, s-sir.” Ceradet’s hands were trembling, and there were tears in his voice. Thara closed his eyes and plunged himself into the pool of hatred within him. _I will not weep again. I cannot weep again._

And he did not, this time, even when the three of them emerged into the night once again and he heard Ceradet’s soft, wavering “Farewell, Thara.” 

“Farewell, Ceradet,” Thara barely whispered as he watched Ceradet walk away, ears and head low. 

He had almost forgotten Metonar was there until Ceradet disappeared into the night. He nearly jumped to hear the curt, “Back to the dormitories with thee, Celehar. Wilt hear from us in four days’ time.” 

Painful as it was to maintain a brisk pace, Thara could not get out of his sight fast enough. 

* 

“Thara?” 

Thara had just a moment before sat up in his narrow bed, the pieces of his nightmares tumbling out of his grasp. His head ached and his gut reeled from drink, as had been the case upon his awakening each of the past three mornings. The sick-making jolt of memory had not hit him yet, but it was there, lurking like a carrion-hound at the edge of cognition and especially fierce on this morning of the day Metonar would return from Cetho. He could not pay it the attention it was due just now because his nightshirt-clad roommate stood at his bedside. 

“What’s toward, Gaver?” Thara asked, voice thick with disorientation. 

Gaver Abelethed was a lugubrious young man at the best of times, but Thara could not ever remember having seen such a look of worry — of fear — on his face before. “Hast heard — no, of course wouldst not have yet, hast only just risen.” 

Thara blinked. His eyes felt crusty, as if he’d been crying in his sleep. “Heard what?” 

Gaver paused, then said quickly and bluntly, “Rector Metonar was killed last night.” 

It made as much sense at first as a couplet from a book of michen-rhymes. Thara blinked again. Then he went cold all over. _Ceradet. No. Please, Ulis, no._

“How…” he began, the words stuttering out of him. “… where?” 

“Outside a bar in Cetho.” 

“Outside a bar in Cetho,” Thara repeated stupidly. His terror abated, somewhat; he reminded himself that Ceradet’s involvement was now far less likely but not impossible. He tried to focus through the pounding in his head. “How’d’st hear of it?” 

“I’m just back from the lavatory. Hensar was whispering about it to a few other lads in the anteroom.”

“How did Hensar hear of it?”

Gaver shrugged. “Same way he hears of everything else long before the rest of us do.”

“So was’t a robbery?” Academic cleric was no lucrative career. But darkness and drink could lead one to mistake the broadcloth and pewter, the moonstone ring and the fine shoes, for the garb of a prosperous commoner. Then Thara recalled that Metonar had worn his scholar’s key on a silver chain and carried a silk handkerchief … and tasted of Anverneise wine. The memory carried with it an additional stab of nausea.

“The other Elders won’t say, yea or nay. But there are … there are rumors.” When Thara did not reply, merely stared, Gaver continued with pursed lips: “They are salacious rumors. I should not like to repeat them.” 

“I should like to hear them,” Thara said. He was fully awake now, his spine like a steel rod, his fingers gripping the thin coverlet tightly. “I shall not repeat them, an it assure thee at all.” 

His roommate’s dark-orange eyes darted to the wall, then back to Thara, before Gaver said quietly, “The rumors are that Rector Metonar was … importuning a young man behind the bar. Violently. The youth’s elder brother was nearby and came to his rescue. The other details are unclear, except that the rector is dead and the brother is in the custody of the Vigilants.” 

“I see,” Thara said without inflection. Full relief flooded him — Ceradet had no brothers — but the same mask he had pulled down over his features before Metonar had already settled into place now, if for very different reasons. 

“There’s more.” Gaver paused with a slight frown. “The Elders do not wish a Witness for the Dead to be called. The brothers’ house and their friends are outraged, and the Vigilants are not much less pleased. Dost think the seminary will prevail in this, Thara?” 

“In sooth, I know not. This is a matter of politics and law, not of the gods.” Thara rubbed at his eyes and marveled at how dispassionate his voice sounded. “Were I the deacon I’d let a Witness at Cetho proceed, then disavow … Rector Metonar, should the rumors prove true. The Elders’ refusal will put wings to a new rumor that —” 

He could not finish the sentence. His stomach was empty — it had been mostly so since he’d last seen Metonar, save for metheglin — but he was barely able to refrain from spewing bile onto his bedclothes.

“— that this was not the first time Rector Metonar had behaved so,” Gaver said, his brows drawing together. “And that the Elders were aware of it.” 

Thara said nothing in reply, though he supposed from Gaver’s grimace that his expression was eloquent enough. His throat ached again. In sooth, it had not stopped aching for the last three days. Nor had any other part of him that Metonar had abused.

“Proverbs aside,” Gaver said, “ _might_ the dead speak lies? Art far more adroit in theology than I.” His academic interests leaned more heavily toward philosophy.

Thara shook his head. “All the accepted treatises that touch upon on the subject agree that the proverb is correct: no falsehoods are told in the Antechamber of Ulis. The dead do not fear the living — only his judgment.”

_May Ulis forgive me, but I dearly hope thou tremblest there as the earth trembles with Osreian’s fury._

“Well. In any event, Hensar and the others predicted the Elders will hold an assembly and tell us all instruction will be canceled for the day but the ulimeire and chapels will stay open.” To pray, of course, that Adru Metonar did not wait very long in that Antechamber, and that the Emperor of the Night Sky welcomed him in full. 

“I expect I’ll visit the ulimeire straight away afterward,” Thara said. He hoped Gaver would not offer to join him. With the entire seminary officially in mourning, a refusal would seem not only churlish but odd. 

Gaver merely replied, “And I after luncheon, I think. In the meanwhile I hope to write another few pages of my deontology disquisition. Merciful goddesses, that assignment will be the death of —” He broke off with a wince. 

“It seems quite onerous, in sooth,” Thara agreed. 

“Yes. Well. I’m sorry I cannot join thee at prayer today, Thara. Hast seemed quite out of sorts the last few days, though I did not and do not wish to pry. But I shall be there with thee in spirit.” 

“Of course,” Thara said mildly. “And I do appreciate thy concern.” 

He left it at that and rose, politely turning his back, and pulled off his nightshirt to begin dressing for the day. Behind him were the sounds of Gaver retreating to his own side of the room to do likewise. 

For the last three mornings Thara had barely been able to choke down the well-seasoned eggs upon toasted bread served in the refectory, nor the crisp white pear on the tray alongside them, nor the mug of strong tea with which seminarians began their days. This morning he could just barely taste them, but at least it was no longer like swallowing great mouthfuls of ash and washing them down with gall. His entire being longed to bolt what remained of the meal and run to the ulimeire. Breeding, and a mistrust of his stomach just now, prevailed. He ate rotely but slowly, taking but small sips of the tea, letting the food restore him as much as was possible for now.

He was breaking his fast alone, as Gaver had been waylaid by another friend. Glancing about the great echoing hall, he saw that many other novices sat alone as well. Conversation was hushed and sparse, expressions discomfited, many ears low. But Thara saw no swollen eyes, nor any reddened noses or cheeks that could not be attributed to the drinking habits of the novice in question. Just as he did not hurry his meal, neither did he hurry in returning his tray to the stacks, where younger novices on kitchen duty would tend to it. 

Across the string of small courtyards between the refectory and the assembly hall he _could_ not hurry, for they were thick with men walking in the same direction. Young and old, elven and goblin, all were grim of countenance. Threaded among them were the usual day-visitors from the Women’s Seminary across the Athamara, granted dispensation to study on the southern bank. Most were of thirty years or more, preceptrices and curates, deeply observant, and deemed unlikely to tempt the men about them. Their miens were no less somber and considerably more shocked, though here and there was one with a perfectly blank expression. Thara wondered how many of them had known Metonar well. He wondered if any of them harbored the same fierce, shameful serpent of joy in their breasts that he did in his. 

He wondered, too, if any of his fellow novices concealed the same serpent behind a doleful façade.

The assembly held no surprises. The announcement of Metonar’s death was grave in tone, rich with laudation, and devoid of detail. As Gaver had predicted, lecture halls would stand empty today that prayer could be devoted to the slain rector. The deacon — _had he known, in sooth?_ — intoned the first words of the prayer of compassion, a hundred younger voices below him joining in the recitation. 

Thara closed his eyes as his lips formed the words, as well-worn into his memory now as the rut of a carriage wheel into dirt. He thought of the bitch-hound his father’s groomsman had once kept, a sleek and sweet-natured courser who licked the faces of michen, torn to pieces by wolves when Thara was five. His mother’s mother, with her sharp eyes and warm smile, eight years dead of an apoplexy. His childhood friend Luca Vedinar, who shortly after attaining his majority had drowned in the Istandaärtha — sheerly, the Vedinada had insisted, by accident. The man begging alms outside the Ulimeire of Ashedro, found frozen on its steps on the bitterest morning of the year. 

_Ulis, hold them all in thy mercy. Hold me in thy mercy, too, this wretched servant of thine who is unable to say thy holiest prayer for one who will harm me no longer._

He thought of Ceradet as well. Thara longed to seek him out, hold his hands in his own and swear to him that they were safe now … but, in sooth, it would be a lie. Were there others at the seminary who would use Ceradet against Thara as Metonar had — would use Thara as Metonar had? And would it in sooth be at all better were they discovered by a preceptor or Elder who simply expelled Thara forthwith and ordered Ceradet flogged? 

_Hold Ceradet in thy mercy too, Ulis, as I can no longer hold him in mine arms._

Long minutes later every man and the handful of women in the assembly hall rose as one, a silent mass of black wool and leather, and adjourned to an ulimeire whose floor already bristled with clerics but rang with near-silence. Only whispers of prayer accompanied the rustle of ceremonial robes, the scrape of hard soles on stone, and the clicking together of beads. 

Thara moved — stumbled, drifted, strode with dignity, he knew not which — to the altar. Above it, the Emperor of the Night Sky rose in low relief from a massive expanse of basalt. Eyes piercing, arms wide, hands open, he pulled Thara to his knees before him as he pulled the waves upon the ocean. And for hours that slipped past unreckoned there were no other supplicants in the ulimeire, no pall of mourning, no pains in Thara’s body nor ghostly hands defiling it. There was only the echoing emptiness of a cold god’s bewilderingly profound love and compassion, and the chill mantle of his protection upon the slender shoulders of one who could not even begin to conceive how he ever might have earned it. 

_Someday, Ulis, I will earn it of thee._


End file.
